


The Quest of the White Hart

by thegirlwiththemouseyhair



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Cynicism, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hero Worship, M/M, Post-Kingsman: The Secret Service, Reflection, Slash if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 06:17:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12315441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlwiththemouseyhair/pseuds/thegirlwiththemouseyhair
Summary: Eggsy Unwin – pleb, underdog, and rule-breaker – can’t stop missing Harry Hart, the best man he ever knew.





	The Quest of the White Hart

There are times when Eggsy misses Harry so much he can’t stand it. It’s not that he’s scared of being a spy, or that he wishes Harry had had more time to teach him the things he needs to know. Kingsman makes it pretty easy to do some drug lord from the Russian mafia or some Mid-East terrorist wannabe without too much fuss, and anyway, Eggsy took care of himself all right even before he met this lot.

No, what keeps Eggsy awake at night, sometimes, in the Kensington townhouse he inherited from Harry or in five-star hotels overseas, is the loneliness. He hates to admit it, even in his own brain. After all, he’s got Roxy and Merlin; it’s hard to save the world with someone and not be mates after that. But the rest of Kingsman? Half of them can barely contain their sneers when they pass him at headquarters, despite Eggsy being far more trustworthy than most of their posh colleagues.

And that’s another thing. It’s downright disturbing, how quickly the new Arthur wanted to cover up the fact that half of Kingsman signed up for worldwide genocide. At first Eggsy had expected Merlin to become the new Arthur, after all the shit that went down. He didn’t realize Merlin was only – _only_ – staff and wouldn’t even qualify. It made him rather sorry for Merlin when he did realize. Merlin deserved it more than some rich old geyser who wanted to treat selling out to Valentine like it was just an embarrassment, like wearing the wrong sort of jacket in summer, or putting the milk in your tea before the hot water.

Sometimes, Eggsy thinks maybe Charlie and the rest of them were right. Maybe he doesn’t belong, doesn’t fucking get Kingsman despite risking his life for them at least twice a week. Aren’t they supposed to be the good guys?

So, actually, there _is_ a lot he wishes he could ask Harry, or learn from Harry, even if it’s not about sick fighting moves or fancy spy gadgets. Those were the easy bits. The hard part – well. There must be more to Kingsman than this, if someone as good as Harry believed in it – died for it, a brutal, pointless death that Eggsy still sees in his nightmares. Harry wouldn’t have fallen for some hopeless bullshit, or used Eggsy like cannon fodder, like Eggsy had accused him of when they first met – would he?

Sometimes, when Eggsy comes home late from Seoul or Tbilisi or Caracas, and has to shush J.B. to avoid waking up his mum and Daisy in the middle of the night, he’ll pour himself a drink in one of Harry’s glasses and sit in Harry’s study missing Harry, from his conscious brain down to the marrow of his bones, it feels like. It’s amazing how much time he spends just _missing_ Harry. He often wonders what Harry saw in him or in Kingsman or in any of them – anything – really. He keeps his chin up around Rox and Merlin and the rest, and acts like he’s sure they’re doing good, that _he’s_ doing good thanks to Kingsman, and the snobs be damned. They fucking saved the world, didn’t they? Even if Eggsy thinks they should be doing more to un-fuck the world that’s left behind and to help the survivors of all those people they couldn’t save from Valentine.

(He’s been encouraging his mum to get some sort of volunteer job counselling victims of the Valentine’s Day violence, now that she don’t have to waste her time worrying about Dean no more, and Daisy’s getting bigger and starting school. She’d be good at that, helping people. Eggsy wishes she’d take his advice without getting so damn suspicious – all _‘How’d you get so rich working in a tailor’s shop, even a posh one in Savile Row?_ ’. She could have been quite a spy herself. Of course, he’d tell her the truth in a heartbeat if it weren’t against stupid Kingsman rules. Maybe he will anyway.)

Maybe, if he were still alive, Harry would say that things change slowly. Maybe he’d say Eggsy’s already making some progress in that direction, and Rox and Merlin. But there are times when it’s hard to feel hopeful – or to be anything but lost in this strange new life, especially without Harry.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta’ed; I don’t yet know if this will be a one shot or if I will continue this with more missing scenes and reflection pieces. The title comes from folklore in general and Arthurian legends in particular, where the white hart (stag) can be both a sign that it’s time to embark on some new quest and/or a symbol of purity and idealism. I’m sure that’s why they gave Harry Hart the surname they did. I have wanted to use that phrase as a title for a fic or something since I first saw Kingsman: The Secret Service when it came out.


End file.
